This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2008, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Posted: 11:54 AM- It's not new technology or who the president is that builds rust in balloting. It's the people voters deal with at the polls.

When voters have a good encounter with poll workers, they are much more likely to have confidence that their ballots were correctly counted, according to a study by the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.

For most voters, the poll worker is the only official they meet face to face during the election.

"Interaction with poll workers has a consistent, big effect on what voters think about the election process," says study co-author Thad Hall, an assistant professor of political science at the U.

The results showed that if a voter had a "less than excellent" interaction with the poll worker, only 38 percent of them were very confident their vote was properly tabulated. However, if voters had an excellent poll worker, 74 percent were confident in the process.

"Voter confidence in the electoral process depends on it," the study states.

Utahns, generally, are lucky in that regard, Hall says. Many counties have mandatory training programs for poll workers.

Salt Lake County will invest about $95,000 for poll-worker training this election, says Jason Yocom, Salt Lake County deputy clerk. The county makes each of its nearly 4,000 poll workers take a three-hour training course, with an additional two-hour class for workers who handle the electronic voting machines or manage a polling station. The county keeps the classes small, with no more than 20 workers per session.

"Training is mandatory for every election so workers can get a refresher every time," says Rozan Mitchell, special-projects director for the Clerk's Office.

Experienced poll workers can do part of their training online, but they still must demonstrate their knowledge in person.